The effectiveness of treatments for various mental and psychological ailments varies depending on the technology used and each technology has its drawbacks. Chemical treatments can only go so far while psychotherapy's effects take years before fruition. Magnetic or electric stimulation of the brain has shown very good results in mitigating if not reversing the effects of such ailments. However, implanted magnetic stimulators require invasive surgery while cranial electrotherapy stimulation has some undesirable side effects such as unpredictable memory loss.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has shown very promising results in the treatment of these ailments without the drawbacks or side effects of the other technologies. However, current TMS technology has some drawbacks as well. Current TMS technology requires that a capacitor or energy device to discharge its energy into an inductor. The inductor receives this energy and, as it does so, the inductor induces a magnetic field that produces electrical currents or action potentials in a patient's brain. Once the discharge from the capacitor is over, the inductor needs to recover from this discharge. The existing mono-phase pulses uses a rise time (when action potentials are elicited from the brain by way of the induced magnetic field) and decay during which the inductor recovers from the discharge. These charge and discharge cycles needed for the inductors used in current TMS technology have an confounding physiological effect due to the inductor recovery from the discharge. Currently, the amount of time required for the inductors to recover in TMS equipment is equal to or longer than the time required to discharge and elicit action potentials in the brain. Unfortunately, during this recovery time, further electrical currents in the brain are induced and these have been shown to have the above confounding physiological effects on the patient.
From the above, there is therefore a need for systems, methods, and devices which mitigates if not avoids the drawbacks of the prior art.